Tiv

Tiv is spoken mainly in Benue State, with significant communities also in Nasarawa, Taraba and Plateau states in Nigeria's Middle Belt. It functions as a strong regional language and marker of Tiv ethnic identity, widely used in community life, agriculture-related oral tradition and local governance in Benue State, and is one of the larger Middle Belt languages by number of speakers. Tiv is used in regional radio broadcasting and is taught as a subject in some schools in Benue State, and there is a body of published Tiv-language material, including Bible translations and school primers, though its presence in national television, film and higher education is more limited than Nigeria's three major languages. Tiv is tonal, and dialect variation exists across its speaking area, though it is comparatively more uniform than some other Middle Belt language clusters. Tiv oral culture is rich in proverbs, folktales and the Icough and Ingough poetic and musical traditions, and the language continues to be transmitted actively to children within Tiv communities.

Tiv is written in a Latin-based orthography developed in the twentieth century through the work of missionary linguists, notably associated with the Dutch Reformed Church mission and, later, Tiv scholars and translators, and refined for Bible translation and literacy work. The orthography uses digraphs such as member consonant clusters distinct from English (for example ny, ngh) and represents Tiv's vowel system without the subdotted letters seen in Yorùbá or Igbo. Tone is phonemically important in Tiv but is not consistently marked in ordinary writing, appearing mainly in linguistic descriptions and some pedagogical texts.